Brawn worked, now the brain

Slog overs over, diplomatic challenge is to score with field spread out

We must thank the Pakistanis for reviving interest in a flagging story. It needed the imaginative powers of a Rashid Qureshi to sniff an Indian plot in the kidnap of The Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl. But it will bring back to the front pages the Indo-Pak tension story which was tiring after the flurry of diplomatic visits and at least a whiff of de-escalation on the borders. Next week will be predictable. More Pakistani allegations, outraged Indian reactions as we see yet another vindication of our doubts on Pakistan’s sincerity despite Pervez Musharraf’s January 12 speech.

It is unlikely anybody would take the Pakistani allegations seriously. We don’t necessarily hire toppers from Harvard or MIT or even the IITs for RAW. But they can’t be so dumb as to get a Mumbai-based American journalist kidnapped, by somebody in Pakistan so silly as to be calling Indian officials from a mobile phone. But it should make us rethink our post-January responses. We acted correctly in not responding too effusively to the speech. But we did err in not changing tack, at least shifting gears, once Musharraf had played that move. We, instead, were so impressed with the success of our coercive diplomacy that we were unwilling to even think of a next move. After all, the armies, even when lined up on the border, cannot sustain the tension of a near-war situation endlessly unless they are mandated to start some probing, firing, overt escalation. And if that is not the idea, why continue to announce there is no question of a pull-back and yet not respond to January 12 substantively? Our own static responses had created a vacuum which something was bound to fill. The Pearl kidnapping and the ludicrous Pakistani responses have now done just that.

AN Indian response to January 12 did not exactly have to be the announcement of the date and venue of the next summit. Coercive diplomacy should have continued but with a tactical twist. Something to lob the ball back in the general’s court. We, on the other hand, took the words of the other general, Powell, too seriously, that as a sovereign nation we could take our time deciding on when Pakistan had done enough to create the right kind of environment for us to respond.

After having moved so fast as to create the greatest military build-up the world has seen (at least in terms of the troops involved) since World War II within three spectacular weeks, we cannot say we will wait till June to respond to a move made by Musharraf in January. We said we needed to be convinced by the situation on the ground. A month or two was too early as during the winter months infiltration is low anyway. Meanwhile, we may have lost tactical time and opportunity.

It is not as if we should have accepted a mere speech from Musharraf as a certificate of good conduct. We erred because, while we would be loath to admit it, we somehow thought the speech itself was evidence that our strategy had worked. It was timed between the Advani and Fernandes visits to the US, was followed by Powell in the subcontinent, and we somehow thought we had already won. Diplomatic strategies usually are a slow burn. This worked so fast in an environment laden with testosterone, it made us smug. We refused to smile, but in our minds we had begun to celebrate too early. Our fault was not that we were soft enough, but that we were complacent. So while we talked in terms of not reducing the pressure on Pakistan by pulling back troops, we did exactly that by not responding, or making a strategic shift in any way.

ONCE we accept that the strategy of military build-up is now tiring a bit we may find scope for some imaginative ideas. Noted analyst C. Raja Mohan (of The Hindu) has an excellent suggestion that we offer a meeting between the two directors general of military operations (DGMOs) to control and monitor infiltration. This would fox the Pakistanis and force them to look for a counter rather than continue to accuse us of being stubborn, or shifting the goal-posts. This agenda should be expanded further. The two DGMOs, for example, could discuss, besides prevention of infiltration, ways of avoiding exchange of fire and other incidents along the borders. Just six months ago, on the eve of Agra, Pakistan had disdainfully ignored an Indian offer to send its DGMO there for talks to stabilise the LoC. Now this would put them in an uncomfortable corner. If they say yes, we have one more gain after the speech. If they say no, they will look insincere and we not so stubborn after all.

If the objective of the build-up was not particularly to go to war but to coerce (even at the real risk of war) the Pakistanis and the world opinion to make the policy shifts we wanted, it is time now to see how we can expand that foothold in the diplomatic battlefield. In cricketing terms, this would be like the hell-for-leather assault in the first 15 overs that is then followed by a more paced, planned innings in the remaining 35 when the field is spread out. It is at this stage that our young cricketers usually falter. Our political leaders should be too old and experienced to fall in the same trap. But you would need to be convinced they have not walked into it since January 12. They showed the spunk to make the first move despite the risk of war. Are they now hesitant to make the next because of the risk that it might even lead to de-escalation? Just when the tensions seem to be playing so well in domestic politics as the latest opinion polls show? The Uttar Pradesh election is still a fortnight away and if we think we can wait until then before the next move is made, one way or the other, we are spreading ourselves out too thin.

Our post-December 13 strategy so far had been quite brilliant. It also worked because we did enough on the ground to convince the world that this was no play-acting. But having gone so far, we have to now find ways of leveraging it in a manner that serves our larger national interest which lies, ultimately, in helping the world in turn help Pakistan change the nature of its society, politics and power structure. India’s, and the subcontinent’s, future really lies in Pakistan being able to evolve into a nation from being a self-styled cause. That is why our strategy, which was so far based on hard realpolitik, has to now evolve into subtle, creative diplomacy, looking for openings, building on them. The battle has to shift back-channel, with the involvement of the world powers because their stakes in helping Pakistan evolve from a cause into a nation are the same as ours. The war can wait meanwhile.

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